The EU is open for business - if only Scotland could take advantage

August is a quiet month; bars and restaurants, even sandwich shops in the EU Quarter close as most institutions take the time for a rest before the frenetic pace kicks in again in September.

The European Parliament is in recess until September 2, when it returns with a Committee and Political Group week in Brussels.

But that does not mean nothing is happening, especially in the Council and Commission given that the horse-trading over the Commissioner appointments is proceeding apace and phone lines between member state capitals are running hot.

As I reported last week, Commission President Dr Ursula von den Leyen’s call to member states to nominate both male and female candidates for Commissioner has been ignored by a number of states.

READ MORE: Could Scotland experience far-right riots like in Southport?

So far, Ireland, Czechia, Greece, Austria, Malta and Slovenia have all indicated they’ll be nominating men. Formally it is up to the member state to make the nomination, but the Commission President allocates the portfolios so there is a lively balancing act underway before the nominees make it to the Parliament hearings after the summer.

But horse-trading aside, it is worth taking the time to think about what the next Commission and Parliament will be spending their time actually doing.

This was set out in the “political guidelines” published on July 18, prior to their presentation to the European Parliament by von der Leyen (in a speech that would have tested Fidel Castro’s indefatigability), prior to a debate on it by MEPs.

The guidelines have no legal status and are not as formal as a Scottish Programme for Government or UK King’s Speech, but they are a useful indicator of the consensus the Commission President has tried to reach with the various groups in parliament and the priorities she hopes to drive forward in the next five years.

At a mere 30 pages, it isn’t even that heavy reading and boils down to six key priorities: l Building a more competitive Europe that balances regulation and innovation that facilitates Europe’s green transition l Boosting the EU’s defence ambitions l Pushing social and economic policies such as affordable housing l Sustaining agriculture and environmental policies l Protecting Europe’s democracy l Standing up for Europe’s global and geopolitical interests.

Obviously, those heads cover a lot of ground. We can expect the Commission to seek to play a more leading role in cohering the member states, particularly on energy and defence, two areas where the member states have always fiercely maintained their own prerogatives.

There is though, given the invasion of Ukraine, a greater realism across member state capitals that now is not the time for the narcissism of small differences, and recent years have seen a clear shift of these competencies away from member states and a greater focus of the member states on making the EU framework work for their interests.

We can expect some serious money to be going to energy and defence spending. There will also be a new EU Commissioner for Defence and an explicit commitment to make a real European Defence Union.

Let’s see how that goes down with Nato traditionalists.

There's also an interesting section called Global Europe, Leveraging Our Power And Partnerships.

READ MORE: Humza Yousaf slams politicians 'normalising far-right language'

“We have entered an age of geostrategic rivalries. The more aggressive posture and unfair economic competition from China, its ‘no-limits’ friendship with Russia – and the dynamics of its relationship with Europe – reflect a shift from co-operation to competition,” it reads.

“We are seeing a weaponisation of all types of policies, from energy to migration and the climate. As a result, our rules-based international order is fraying, and our global institutions have become less effective.”

A pretty bleak assessment by any yardstick but the clearest indication yet that the EU is going to focus on its own house and backyard with a coalition of the willing – be that G7, Nato or whoever – and if you’re not in the room you’re nowhere.

This section also goes on to describe “enlargement as a geopolitical imperative” and an explicit commitment to create a new post of Enlargement Commissioner given the enlargement talks underway with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Türkiye, Ukraine.

It is obvious – and to my mind long overdue – that the EU is now going to give some serious pre-accession assistance to the Western Balkans, and where Türkiye and Ukraine are different cases, there is going to be a more serious focus on building a bigger EU – in the bit of the world Russia is paying close attention to.

Gone is the self-indulgent “enlargement fatigue” of the Barroso and Juncker Commissions, the EU is open for business and seeking new members.

Also in this section was the one, solitary, mention of the United Kingdom, a vague line about “we will work to strengthen relations with the United Kingdom on issues of shared interest, such as energy, security, resilience and people-to-people contacts”.

Not nothing, but not much either.

There is a lot in the rest of the document that Scotland and the UK should be all over and have a lot to gain from involving ourselves in.

But that will take political will on both sides and the UK will have to work hard for any bandwidth.